Connors Institute

9/ "We see at least five major issues plaguing academia, issues which play a major role in the left’s epistemic problems." Lawrence Eppard (of @UtterlyModerate), @PsychRabble, and Steven Sloman and I wrote about the 5 problems plaguing academia here: ship.edu/globalassets/keysto…

8/ "In many social science, humanities, and education academic journals and college classrooms across the country, academics are disseminating information that is not just incorrect, but the opposite of what the best evidence suggests. They are leading people away from truth, not toward it. And these claims become part of 'the science,' which those outside of academia propagate unknowingly. We believe this is a major cause ofthe left’s epistemic crisis.

7/ "We believe one of the most important contributors to this problem is certain malfunctioning segments of academia—especially disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, and education—where much of the misleading information is created in the first place. These malfunctioning segments of academia make irresponsible claims that then proliferate throughout the public discourse as 'the science.' It is true that media outlets are not blameless—they need to do a much better job of presenting the weight of the evidence on a topic, not just the hottest new study or research findings that fit their narratives. But academia plays a major role here and needs to get its house in order.

6/ "We think the bigger problem for liberal America is that, while they may be more likely to trust legitimate sources of information, often (a) those outlets are unaware that they are spreading misinformation because it appears to be backed by 'the science' or (b) without understanding the preponderance of the evidence, outlets pick and choose 'the science' that backs their arguments. Either way, it appears to the unknowing public that they are being presented with arguments that reflect the preponderance of the empirical evidence when in fact they are not.

5/ "While there has been a considerable amount of attention paid to misleading information on the right, we do not believe there is nearly enough paid to this problem on the left. So while it is true that the right has serious problems with misleading information, we believe there is strong evidence that it plagues the left as well, and it needs to be taken much more seriously by those on the left in positions to actually do something about it.

4/ "In our view, there are two main problems on the right when it comes to misleading information. First, there has been an explosion of low-quality news and information sources on the right in recent decades. Second, American conservatives trust very few news and information sources, and the ones that a majority do trust tend to be partisan and low quality.

3/ "We are able to excel in the modern world not because of our incredibly complex understanding of it, but because of the community’s collective understanding of it and our trust in and reliance on the expertise of others within that community to sustain it. So it is vital that we rely on information produced by the trustworthy members of the larger epistemic system as we make countless decisions in life. And when we begin to avoid these trustworthy members in favor of untrustworthy ones, our society can begin to falter. Unfortunately, we believe that this is where we are in the U.S. today.

2/ "The problem runs even deeper than the misuse of information by incompetent, partisan, and/or bad faith actors. People consuming news and information often do not even respond to evidence or arguments. Instead, we rely on our preformed ideas to make sense of what we see. We interpret information to conform to our expectations.

New paper out with some colleagues: "Natural human cognitive tendencies—like myside bias—make it tempting for people to seek out and agree with low-quality information that affirms their prior beliefs and values while avoiding information that does not. Myside bias fuels the development of ideological silos, epistemic secession, and tribal epistemology. While many view this as largely a right-wing problem, we see this occurring across the political spectrum." 🧵